Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/63

 though I don't rightly remember who he was exactly,"

"One of Shakespeare's characters," interposed Robin.

"Jus' so—well, he couldn't have bin a bad fellow, you know. Then, as to your other name, Wright—that 's all right, you know, and might have bin writer if you 'd taken to the quill or the law. Anyhow, as long as you 're Wright, of course you can't be wrong—eh, young feller?"

Jim Slagg was so tickled with this sudden sally that he laughed, and in so doing shut his little eyes, and opened an enormous mouth, fully furnished with an unbroken set of splendid teeth.

Thus pleasantly did Robin while away the time with his future shipmate until he arrived at the end of his journey, when he parted from Jim Slagg and was met by Ebenezer Smith.

That energetic electrician, instead of at once taking him on board the Great Eastern, took him to a small inn, where he gave him his tea and put him through a rather severe electrical examination, out of which our anxious hero emerged with credit.

"You 'll do, Robin," said his examiner, who was a free-and-easy yet kindly electrician, "but you want instruction in many things."

"Indeed I do, sir," said Robin, "for I have had